ARMENIA DISARMS A VIGILANTE GROUP

The new Government of Soviet Armenia said today that it had faced down and disarmed the leaders and scores of guerrillas of a vigilante group that has alarmed the republic with factional violence.

Soviet news accounts said no shots were fired in the early morning showdown at the headquarters of the rogue paramilitary group, the Armenian National Army, after troops from the republic and policemen surrounded the Yerevan headquarters to carry out the Parliament's order outlawing the band.

The confrontation, in which the group's leaders finally told their supporters to lay down their arms and obey the republic's authority, was a critical test of the separatist-minded new Government's ability to bring greater order to Armenia and demonstrate it requires far less subservience to Moscow.

The new Armenian President, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, estimated that it could take up to two more months to pacify the Armenian National Army, one of the chief paramilitary groups in the republic, with 5,000 members who have been arming themselves in battles and raids on Soviet troops and police armories.

The reported lessening of violence and tension would provide a welcome note for Mr. Gorbachev in his increasing power struggle with the nation's 15 republics, most of which have served notice that they expect greater sovereignty, if not full independence, under the promised reorganization of the national union.

The republic's Parliament, which had earlier been more sympathetic to the Armenian guerrilla movement, declared a state of emergency Wednesday and outlawed the band after some of its fighters fired on a parliamentary inquiry committee and shot dead a member of Parliament, Viktor Aivazyan, at the military group's headquarters.

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''The people have seen that the republic has a real government and that this government works,'' President Ter-Petrosyan told the republic's Parliament today in announcing that 150 guerrillas had yielded more than half a ton of guns and ammunition and been allowed to go home, while 50 others had secretly fled with their weapons.

Rebels Ordered to Disarm

''We do not wish to spill blood and we stand for a peaceful settlement of the conflict,'' he said, stressing the Armenian government's determination to track and disarm the remaining guerrillas and restore law and order.

The republic has suffered for more than two years from factional guerrilla violence and interethnic conflict along the border with the Azerbaijan republic, Armenia's historic rival. Hundreds of residents of both republics have been killed since the outbreak of violence over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijan-controlled enclave populated mainly by Armenians who prefer union with Armenia.

Two leaders of the Armenian National Army, Razmik Vasiliyan and Vartan Vartanyan, eventually appealed on television for their members to disarm and join the republic's military forces if they wanted to fight to defend the republic. The two yielded to the government after first attempting during the early morning confrontation to ''dictate conditions'' to parliamentary negotiators so that the paramilitary fighters would keep their weapons, according to Tass, the Soviet press agency.

But the republic negotiators held firm to the Parliament's order that the militants either disband or face criminal charges and the rogue army's leadership finally cooperated, according to press accounts. That was followed by the surrender of the paramilitary headquarters and, later today, reports of guerrillas turning in their arms at several points in the republic.

''Yesterday was the quietest day in the past six months in this republic,'' President Ter-Petrosyan told Parliament in claiming initial success with the disarmament order and promising further measures to restore a sense of lawful order.

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A version of this article appears in print on August 31, 1990, on Page A00006 of the National edition with the headline: ARMENIA DISARMS A VIGILANTE GROUP. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe